- Uber Eats is expanding into Germany, starting with Berlin, over the next few weeks.
- The news prompted a Twitter spat between the CEOs of Uber and Just Eat Takeaway.
- Uber's head of delivery called Germany "strategically important" in the company's push for profitability.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The CEO of Uber got into a feisty Twitter exchange on Wednesday with a food delivery service rival.
After announcing that Uber Eats will expand into Germany – and a 5.4% drop in the stock of market-leader Just Eat Takeaway – the Dutch company's CEO, Jitse Groen, insinuated Uber's strategy was to "depress our share price."
"Advice: pay a little less attention to your short term stock price and more attention to your Tech and Ops," Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi replied.
Groen shot back: "Start paying taxes, minimum wage and social security premiums before giving a founder advice on how he should run his business."
Neither company immediately responded to a request for comment on the exchange.
-dara khosrowshahi (@dkhos) April 21, 2021
Just Eat Takeaway enjoys a dominant position in Germany after it acquired a local business in 2018, according to Bloomberg. The company also beat out Uber in a recent deal with GrubHub that will give the European company a major slice of the US food delivery market.
Across Europe, 24 million people used Uber Eats to order meals last year, but Just Eat Takeaway's dominance in Germany suggests there's room for Uber to expand there. Uber says it will start offering deliveries in Berlin in the coming weeks.
Uber's head of delivery told the Financial Times that Germany is a "strategically important country" in the company's push to profitability, and that Just Eat Takeaway's fees are "extraordinarily high."
"That translates into consumers and merchants actually being quite desperate for additional options," he said.
Part of the challenge for Uber will be adapting its delivery model to a fleet management system in order to comply with German labor laws. Under that system, Uber pays a partner company that hires and pays drivers, as opposed to the independent gig-worker model that is common in the US.
Uber, which has expanded from ride-hailing to food delivery, package delivery, and courier service, is scheduled to release its earnings on May 5.